Eight years ago Newark Star-Ledger film critic Stephen J. Whitty asked Harrison Ford about Marshall Fine's notion that stinking rich film stars should consider using their power and freedom to make small personal indie-style films, and "he thought I was crazy," Whitty reports.

"Ford isn't just an actor but a movie star, too -- not just a celebrity but a commodity. He's extremely aware of how long he chased success in Hollywood, acutely conscious of the business of the show business he's in. And he's at peace with that. [During our interview to promote Kathryn Bigelow's K9], "the...Read More

Everyone wants health care reform but the Democrats "couldn't sell it," Bill Maher said to Jay Leno last Friday night. They're so impotent in their unwillingness to wield power that "they couldn't sell a cub scout to a pedophile," he said.

Ed Luce's Financial Times assessment of the Obama administration's failure says it's basically caught in a campaign mode, and that the principal bad guys behind this emphasis are Obama's four most trusted aides -- chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, senior adviser David Axelrod, spokesperson Robert Gibbs and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.

A HuffPost summary states that "if current trends continue, this once mesmerizing Camelot-ish operation will be be seen in the history books as the presidential administration that -- to distort slightly and inversely paraphrase Churchill -- never have so many talented people managed to achieve so...Read More

Marshall Fine is wondering why three fabulously wealthy big-name actors who are past their prime and on their way down -- Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson -- don't just retire from the mass-market movie game and henceforth act only in pure indie or even straight-to-video flicks for young directors who could use their help.

In a pig's eye. You'd think that a marquee-name actor with several hundred million in his or her bank account would want to make movies for quality-chops alone and hang the box-office. But for some perverse reason the richer actors get the less inclined they are...Read More

Notes on a Season columnist Pete Hammond recently reported Avatar director-writer James Cameron believes that were it not for the Alice in Wonderland, Hubble 3D and How To Train Your Dragon eating up all the 3-D screens in March that Avatar might reach the $3 billion worldwide mark.

I asked Cameron about this myself two nights ago and he confirmed. I don't know about the $3 billion but he's almost certainly right that if Avatar could remain in all the 3-D venues it would continue to earn big-time into March and April.

"Back in 1979, Marty Feldman was concerned about the increasing piety of the right wing, the blind susceptibility of their followers, the insatiable reach of American corporations and people like Anita Bryant invoking God's name in regards to subjugating others," a friend writes. "I know exactly what he'd make of Sarah Palin today.

Feldman's In God We Trust, which he directed and co-wrote, bombed with the critics and didn't sell many tickets. It was also torpedoed, sand-bagged and dis-owned by its own distributor, Universal Pictures.

It's a...Read More

My strongest impressions regarding last night's Chopin Virtuosos tribute featuring An Education's Carey Mulligan, A Serious Man's Michael Stuhlbarg, The Lovely Bones' Saoirse Ronan, and Young Victoria's Emily Blunt, in this order: (a) the fact that Mulligan got the biggest laugh (see video below), (b) moderator Sean Smith's observation that Mulligan has "probably heard from scores of middle-aged men telling her that they loved An Education," (c) Ronan's Irish accent is endearing, and (d) a notion that Stuhlbarg is a man with great lakes of inner peace.

...Read More

Earlier today And The Winner Is columnist Scott Feinberg asked Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron to comment on the similarities between Strange Days and Avatar, the plots of which were both hatched sometime between '94 or '95.

As mentioned earlier, Quentin Tarantino had the best story-telling riffs during today's "Directors on Directing" panel discussion at Santa Barbara's Lobero theatre. I'm posting three Tarantino excerpts here. I'm sorry I missed his boast about being the owner of the only repertory house in Los Angeles (i.e., the New Beverly) and how he'll "burn the place down" before he shows anything there with digital projection.

The first [above] is a story that Brian DePalma told him about his feelings in 1980 regarding Blow Out vs. Raging Bull....Read More

BEST PICTURE

Avatar (20th Century Fox), d. James Cameron; The Blind Side (Warner Bros.), d: John Lee Hancock; District 9 (Screen Gems), d: Neill Blomkamp; An Education (Sony Classics), d: Lone Scherfig; The Hurt Locker, d: Kathryn Bigelow; Inglourious Basterds (Universal Pictures/The Weinstein Company), d: Quentin Tarantino; Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (Lionsgate), d: Lee Daniels; A Serious Man (Focus Features), d: Joel and Ethan Coen; Up (Disney), d: Pete Docter, Bob Peterson; Up In The Air (Paramount), d: Jason Reitman.

BEST DIRECTOR

James Cameron (Avatar), Jason Reitman (Up In The Air); Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker); Lee Daniels (Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire); Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds).

BEST ACTOR

Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart); Morgan Freeman (Invictus); George Clooney (Up In The Air); Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker); Colin Firth, (A Single Man).

BEST ACTRESS

Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side); Carey Mulligan (An Education); Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia, It's Complicated); Gabby Sidibe, Precious; Helen Mirren (The Last Station).

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christopher Plummer (The Last Station); Woody Harrelson (The Messenger); Matt Damon (Invictus); Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds); Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones).

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Mo'nique (Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire); Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air); Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air); Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart), Penelope Cruz (Nine).

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

District 9, written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell; An Education, screenplay by Nick Hornby; In the Loop, screenplay by Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche; ,em>Precious, screenplay by Geoffrey Fletcher; Up in the Air, screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

The Hurt Locker, written by Mark Boal; Inglourious Basterds, written by Quentin Tarantino; The Messenger, written by Alessandro Camon & Oren Moverman; A Serious Man, written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen; Up, screenplay by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, story by Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Tom McCarthy.

BEST EDITING

Chris Innis, Bob Murawski (The Hurt Locker), Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua and James Cameron (Avatar); Julian Clarke (District 9); Joe Klotz (Precious).

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Mauro Fiore (Avatar); Bruno Delbonnel (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince); Christian Berger (White Ribbon); Robert Richardson (Inglourious Basterds); Barry Ackroyd (The Hurt Locker).

BEST EDITING

Avatar, Stephen Rivkin, John Refoua and James Cameron; District 9, Julian Clarke; The Hurt Locker, Bob Murawski and Chris Innis; Inglourious Basterds, Sally Menke; Precious, Joe Klotz.

BEST ART DIRECTION

Avatar (Art Direction: Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg; Set Decoration: Kim Sinclair); The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Art Direction: Dave Warren and Anastasia Masaro; Set Decoration: Caroline Smith); Nine (Art Direction: John Myhre; Set Decoration: Gordon Sim); Sherlock Holmes (Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood; Set Decoration: Katie Spencer); The Young Victoria (Art Direction: Patrice Vermette; Set Decoration: Maggie Gray).

BEST SOUND MIXING

Avatar, Christopher Boyes, Gary Summers, Andy Nelson and Tony Johnson; The Hurt Locker, Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett; Inglourious Basterds, Michael Minkler, Tony Lamberti and Mark Ulano; Star Trek, Anna Behlmer, Andy Nelson and Peter J. Devlin; ,em>Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers and Geoffrey Patterson.

BEST SOUND EDITING

Avatar, Christopher Boyes and Gwendolyn Yates Whittle; The Hurt Locker, Paul N.J. Ottosson; Inglourious Basterds, Wylie Stateman; Star Trek, Mark Stoeckinger and Alan Rankin; Up, Michael Silvers and Tom Myers.

BEST FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILM

Ajami, (Israel); El Secreto de Sus Ojos" (Argentina); The Milk of Sorrow (Peru); Un Prophete, (France); The White Ribbon (Germany).

BEST MAKEUP

Il Divo, Aldo Signoretti and Vittorio Sodano; Star Trek, Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow; The Young Victoria, Jon Henry Gordon and Jenny Shircore.\

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

"Almost There" from The Princess and the Frog, Music and Lyric by Randy Newman; "Down in New Orleans" from The Princess and the Frog, Music and Lyric by Randy Newman.; "Loin de Paname" from Paris 36, Music by Reinhardt Wagner Lyric by Frank Thomas; "Take It All" from Nine, Music and Lyric by Maury Yeston; "The Weary Kind" from Crazy Heart, Music and Lyric by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett.

BEST SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)

French Roast, Fabrice O. Joubert; Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty, Nicky Phelan and Darragh O'Connell; The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte), Javier Recio Gracia; Logorama, Nicolas Schmerkin; A Matter of Loaf and Death, Nick Park.

SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)

The Door, Juanita Wilson and James Flynn; Instead of Abracadabra, Patrik Eklund and Mathias Fjellstroem; Kavi, Gregg Helvey; Miracle Fish, Luke Doolan and Drew Bailey; ,em>The New Tenants, Joachim Back and Tivi Magnusson.

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Avatar, Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R. Jones; District 9, Dan Kaufman, Peter Muyzers, Robert Habros and Matt Aitken; Star Trek, Roger Guyett, Russell Earl, Paul Kavanagh and Burt Dalton

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

Janet Patterson (Bright Star); Catherine Leterrier (Coco Before Chanel); Monique Prudhomme ( The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus); Collen Atwood (Nine); Sandy Powell (The Young Victoria.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

James Horner (Avatar); Alexandre Desplat (Fantastic Mr. Fox); Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders (The Hurt Locker); Hans Zimmer (Sherlock Holmes); Michael Giacchino (Up).

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Burma VJ (Anders Ostergaard and Lise Lense-Moller); The Cove (d: Louis Psihoyos), Food, Inc. (Robert Kenner and Elise Pearlstein); The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers ( Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith), Which Way Home (Rebecca Cammisa).'

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT

"China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province", Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill; "The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner", Daniel Junge and Henry Ansbacher; "The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant", Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert; "Music by Prudence", Roger Ross Williams and Elinor Burkett; "Rabbit a la Berlin", Bartek Konopka and Anna Wydra

For those who don't own the Criterion DVD of Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (or who've never watched the extras), this Peter Ustinov recollection contains a funny, must-see Charles Laughton impression plus two or three stories about Laughton during pre-production and principal.

We all know that Hurt Locker helmer Kathryn Bigelow has been uninterested in playing the gender card when asked about her potential to become the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar. And The Winner Is columnist Scott Feinberg is nonetheless running quotes from three female directors -- Gina Prince-Blythewood (The Secret Life of Bees), Kimberly Pierce (Boys Don't Cry, Stop-Loss) and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp, 12th and Delaware) -- about Bigelow being on the precipice.

Listen to Alex North's "love theme from Spartacus" before playing this brief video clip.

I've just come from the "Directors on Directing" panel discussion at the Lobero theatre. A good one. Quentin Tarantino delivered the most entertaining riffs; Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron, sitting beside each other, were a kind of tag team and ranked a close second. The other panelists were Lee Daniels (Precious), Pete Docter (Up) and Todd Phillips (The Hangover). It was moderated by Variety's Peter Bart.

As if by magic or cosmic intuition, yesterday's suggestion that Santa Barbara Film Festival tribute ceremonies could use a little less discipline and perhaps unfold less smoothly and uniformly came true hours later during last night's James Cameron tribute at the Arlington theatre. And everyone played their parts beautifully.

Except for the show starting almost 35 minutes late (i.e., around 8:35 pm), almost nothing happened as planned. Cameron began delivering his acceptance speech at the get-go as host Leonard Maltin stood on the opposite side of...Read More

Clearly the little kid in the hat was (a) feeling under-appreciated and wanted some attention, or (b) was indicating to the audience and the producers that he thought little of Back to the Future III and that people who felt otherwise knew what they could do. Either way this is one of the most blatant "why did they leave this in?" shots since the young kid in the cafeteria who plugged his ears before Eva Marie Saint shot Cary Grant in North by Northwest.

"I don't know what I'm allowed to say about Inception," Leonardo DiCaprio recently told a junket journalist for the Philippine Inquirer.

"It's Chris [Nolan] delving into dream psychoanalysis and, at the same time, making a high-octane, surreal film that came from his mind. He wrote the entire thing, and it all made sense to him. [But] it didn't make sense to many of us when we were doing it. We had to do a lot of detective work to figure out what the movie was about."

To me DiCaprio's statement as almost an iron-clad guarantee that Inception is going to...Read More

I was irritated earlier this afternoon at the absolute refusal of the L.A. Times/Envelope Oscar-preference software to allow me to buy a few shares of Christoph Waltz stock, but that's forgotten now. It vanished from my head the minute I saw the great-looking design of the L.A. Times All Stars rundown of choices and...uh, stock picks. It's the coolest-looking thing I've been a part of, visually, in any medium. I feel genuinely honored and gratified to have been included.

Some of the most gifted screenwriters in the business sorta kinda dropped the personality ball this morning. The goal of any participant in a panel discussion is to inject some energy and perhaps a little unruly pizazz into the proceedings. But this morning's "It Starts With The Script" discussion, moderated by Indiewire columnist Anne Thompson, never got off the ground, much less got my pulse racing.

Read More

Who cared/knew/gave a shit about Dear John, the Amanda Seyfried-Channing Tatum drama that kicked Avatar to the curb yesterday, and is expected to earn $35 million by Sunday night?

I had the tracking that pre-told the tale, but I couldn't be bothered with all the SBIFF razmatazz and running around.

London's National Film & Television School has created a tart comedy short -- Mr. Pixel Mrs. Grain: A Never-Ending Love Story -- that offers "a humorous illustration of the benefit from both worlds of film and digital." Fine and good, but the grain monks folded their tents and went into hiding after Martin Scorsese more or less sided with the HE view. Game over.

Last night Pete Hammond briefly mentioned Gun Shy, my favorite Sandra Bullock-produced film of all time, and then dropped it. Bullock said nothing (i.e., let's move on), and had little to add when I mentioned it at the after-party. "Some of us really loved that film," I said. "Elvis Mitchell did handstands over it in his N.Y. Times review." This is how good but under-appreciated movies die on Netflix -- even their producers are ready to sweep them under the rug.

There's always a vague...Read More

I was reminded of three or four things during last night's Santa Barbara Film Festival tribute to Sandra Bullock. One, she's whip-smart but uncomplicated -- she had a clean and concise answer for every question thrown her way, but she's not into soul-baring. Two, she worked long and hard to prove her way out of the romantic-comedy prison she felt trapped in about ten years ago. Three, she didn't want to portray her Blind Side character (the real-life Leigh Anne Tuohy) because she felt she was an unrealistic construct -- but she changed her mind after meeting her.

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I've tapped out a summary of the films I'm intending to put into the 2010 Oscar Balloon but without acting nominations, which no one ever knows anything about until they happen. Here's how the list looks as we speak -- suggestions/critiques are welcome. Nearly 60 films of some apparent distinction, or so it would appear.

BEST PICTURE

True Grit (Paramount, d: Joel and Ethan Coen; Inception (Warner Bros.), d: Chris Nolan; Fair Game (Zucker/Participant), d: Doug Liman; The Conspirator (Wildwood), d: Robert Redford; The Social Network (Sony/Columbia), d: David Fincher; Hereafter (Warner Bros.), d: Clint Eastwood; Green Zone (Universal), d: Paul Greengrass; Biutiful...Read More

Hotshot director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Kinsey, Gods and Monsters) is reportedly developing and co-writing a proposed half-hour series for HBO called Tilda, about a Nikki Finke-styled Hollywood blogger.

If Condon and co-writer Cynthia Mort base their character too closely on Finke they'll be stuck with a hugely unappealing character, to say the least -- thorny, indifferent to the Catholic-church aspect of movie-watching, vindictive tendencies, curiously hermetic, cut off from the Seinfeld-like aroma of average human experience, etc.

I wouldn't watch a half-hour series about a Finke-like character with a gun to my head. I would suggest that Condon-Mort focus on...Read More

"Black films looking to attract white audiences flatter them with [a] kind of stereotype: the merciful slave master," African-American author Ismael Reed writes in today's N.Y. Times.

"In guilt-free bits of merchandise like Precious, white characters are always portrayed as caring. There to help. Never shown as contributing to the oppression of African-Americans. Problems that members of the black underclass encounter are a result of their culture, their lack of personal responsibility.

"It's no surprise either that white critics -- eight out of the nine comments used on the publicity Web site for "Precious" were from white men and women --...Read More

In a 2.5 Daily Mail interview, James Cameron's ex-wife Linda Hamilton quotes the Avatar director as having said the following: "Anybody can be a father or a husband -- there are only five people in the world who can do what I do, and I'm going for that."

I get that. I never felt this way about fathering, but my own dad kind of went that way -- he loved being a big-league advertising hot-shot, and wasn't that into hugging or nurturing his kids. So I have an understanding. Big-ego men of high or historic accomplishment tend to embrace whatever makes...Read More

It wouldn't be fair to write about Derek Magyar's Flying Lessons, which opened the Santa Barbara Film Festival last night. I watched the first few minutes, but I had to leave to buy some cough syrup and spray. For some reason a slight cough caused by a throat tickle blew up into something worse yesterday. It was awful. So I got the damn cough syrup, came back, watched the film for another 20 or 25 minutes. And then I gave up.

I don't have to watch...Read More

There's an aura of almost rapturous serenity in the hallways of the Hotel Santa Barbara in the early morning hours. It exudes a realm and a mindset so far removed from the world of Hispanic party elephants it's not even funny. I spoke to a local cab driver last night who didn't even know that Santa Barbara hosts an annual film festival, much that the festival was beginning last night. So many people live in their little bubbles.

It began to rain in Santa Barbara early this morning,...Read More

Cameron, Paxton, Rosenthal, Bigelow, Henriksen, Reiser, Reinhold and Pasdar, to name but a few. Movieline's Kyle Buchanan had this earlier today.

The first line of the second paragraph of Anthony Lane's review of Edge of Darkness (in the 2.8 issue of The New Yorker) reads as follows: "Mel Gibson, who looks and sounds not a day over sixty-five, plays a policeman named Thomas Craven."

The remainder continues: "The name is a joke, since the movie insists, time and again, that he has all but dispensed with fear. Warned by a fellow-officer that "someone armed and dangerous" is on the loose, Craven replies, 'What do you think I am?' This is delivered not with a wink and a...Read More

The YouTube description reads as follows: "Techno Remix of Mel Gibson's WGN interview with Dean Richards, during which Gibson called Dean an asshole on air."

The L.A.County Coroner's office has announced that Brittany Murphy died of "community acquired pneumonia complicated by iron deficiency anemia and multiple drug intoxication." They're calling it "accidental." It would appear, however, that the drugs didn't get into her system as a result of a gang of ne'er-do-wells kidnapping Murphy and forcing her to swallow them against her will.

HE Blu-ray correspondent Moises Chiullan reports that director William Friedkin has decided against screwing up the To Live and Die in L.A. Bluray in the manner of last year's French Connection debacle.

Friedkin's acid-washed version of his Oscar-winning 1971 film was the first corporate-sanctioned vandalizing of a classic film and the first known instance in which a respected director had defaced his own work. Good to see he's had second thoughts.

I like this teaser one-sheet just fine, but marketing-wise it's too conceptual, too Saul Bass, too Hollywood Key Art Awards. The plebes would take one look and go "naaah."

Leaving for Los Angeles in a few minutes. Won't be filing anything until mid-afternoon, which is when I'll be chilling (I.e., stuck) inside LAX for three hours.

According to "Hollywood's Top 40," a piece by Peter Newcomb on page 272 in the new Vanity Fair, the following filmmakers pocketed the following amounts in 2009: (1) Michael Bay, $125 million; (2) Steven Spielberg, $85 million; (3) Roland Emmerich, $70 million; (4) James Cameron, $50 million; (5) Todd Phillips, $44 million; (6) Daniel Radcliffe, $41 million; (7) Ben Stiller, $40 million; (8) Tom Hanks, $36 million; (9) JJ Abrams, 36 million; and Jerry Bruckheimer, $35 million.

Way down at the bottom of the list is Brad...Read More

Bloomberg.com's Kristen Haunss reported today about slick Wall Street types taking part in a mixed martial arts Fight Club scene at Manhattan's Renzo Gracie Academy.

"We get a lot of finance guys," says RGAA's program director Max McGarr. "It's a good release from their job. If you lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's good to come here and get it out." Richard Byrne, CEO of Deutsche Bank Securities who practices jiu-jitsu and sparring at the club, calls it "a great stress reliever...talk about a great way to get aggression out, and it's an unbelievable workout."

Mixed martial arts is...Read More

How many top-tier actors today could do this scene and really give it their all and bring it home, like this fellow does?

"Beware those quick to praise for they need praise in return.

"Beware those who are quick to censor -- they are afraid of what they do not know.

"Beware those who seek constant crowds for they are nothing alone."

I've known hundreds if not thousands of people who've seemed to fit the description of those first and third lines. It goes without saying I've never forgotten them. Every time I meet someone new I find myself wondering who they really are (or may be) in the solitude of their cars, beds and bathrooms.

I'm trying to decide whether or not to spend $1500-plus so I can attend 2010 South by Southwest (3.12 to 3.20) and in so doing catch the following (which I haven't yet seen): Bernard Rose's Mr. Nice, Michel Gondry's The Thorn in the Heart, Alexandre O. Philippe's The People vs. George Lucas, Shane Meadows' Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee, Steven Soderbergh's And Everything Is Going Fine, Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas' American: The Bill Hicks Story, Mike Woolf's Man on A Mission, Jacob Hatley's Ain't In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm, Mark Landsman's Thunder Soul and Daniel Stamm's Cotton, as...Read More

If the 2.9.07 release of the dreadful Norbit damaged Eddie Murphy's chances of winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his Dreamgirls performance, will last month's DVD/Bluray release of the dreadful All About Steve hurt Sandra Bullock's bid for a Best Actress Oscar? Probably not, but if Steve had been released theatrically this month, maybe. Is Bullock the first actress to have been nominated for a Best Actress Razzie and a Best Actress Oscar the same year?

The Vancouver Sun's Chris Parry has cited numerous instances in which junket critic Paul Fischer -- an Australian commonly known for dispensing favorable junket-whore quotes -- has used festival notes and synopses to fortify his reviews.

As Parry puts it, "In a case of the world coming full circle, a film reviewer who has made a name for himself being quoted in movie marketing materials is accused of plagiarizing large chunks of his film reviews -- from movie marketing materials." I'm sorry for Fischer, whom I know from the junket/festival circuit, and the woes he...Read More

"Part Peckinpah, part Hong Kong, the movies Luc Besson creates -- including Pierre Morel's From Paris With Love, which he produced and wrote the story for -- are kinetic juggernauts, as carefully plotted with action beats as any of Jerry Bruckheimer's or Joel Silver's films, but with more wit and adrenaline. There's no pretense or wasted motion in Besson's films, and that includes little time spent trying to force sense into the script.

"Rather, Besson's films are like elaborate wind-up toys that seldom rest. You crank them up,...Read More

In yesterday's Network thread someone said that Arthur Hiller and Paddy Chayefsky's The Hospital (1971) is a better, more substantial film. I feel the same way. I adore Network but Barnard Hughes ' soliloquy/rationale for his hospital killings is the most eloquent slice of cinema that Hiller ever directed. I'm especially speaking of the portion that begins at 5:56 and ends at 8:00 (concluding with the words "the whole wounded madhouse of our times").

It's staggering -- nobody working today seems to be capable...Read More

It's Santa Barbara Film Festival and fragrant-weather time again. Early tomorrow I'm flying to Los Angeles. Tomorrow afternoon I'll sit for three hours at LAX before catching a puddle-jumper to the so-inconsequential-it's-almost-secretive Santa Barbara airport. Soon after I'll be checked into the Hotel Santa Barbara and walking up State Street to the opening-night film -- Derek Magyar's Flying Lessons. Under cloudy skies.

Held in the immediate wake of the Oscar nominations, the SBIFF is the premiere forum for Oscar Contemplation and Fortification, and a place for lively discussion panels and intriguing films (festival chief Roger Durling...Read More